The Hogwarts Legacy Discord is an unreadable battleground

polygon.com:

The release of Hogwarts Legacy has only heightened divisions among Harry Potter fans. By commercial measures, the game is already a massive success, with over 10 million copies sold. It is also currently one of the most popular games on Twitch. But the game’s release has also been marked by controversy. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has made repeated statements over the past few years that were widely viewed as transphobic. Trans advocates have suggested boycotting the game in light of Rowling’s ongoing actions.

The conversation, if you can even call it one, has been playing out on all ends of the internet. Major streamers, notably Hasan Piker, have decided not to stream the game — either as a form of protest or for fear of harassment. The Twitter replies to tweets from the official Hogwarts Legacy account are full of memes and trolls. People are making explainer videos on TikTok to cash in on the interest.

Discord has become one of the worst venues for conversation, as thousands of users spam their opinions and troll one another in real time, flooding the server with messages. The Hogwarts Legacy Discord server has become ground zero for one of the internet’s most toxic debates.

The Discord, which is simply called “Hogwarts Legacy,” has roughly 157,000 members. The first message in the Discord was posted to the announcement channel in September 2020, around the time the first trailer for the game dropped. Just a few months prior, in June 2020, J.K. Rowling published an essay on her website expressing skepticism over “new trans activism.” In the essay she also mentioned a discredited hypothetical about sexual predators being permitted in women’s bathrooms. (U.S. states in which trans people may use the bathroom